KARNES COUNTY - Allan Hedtke does not worry so much whether nearby oil and gas fracking wells are contaminating his well water.

He worries when he'll run out of water altogether in Karnes County.

For more than 70 years, cold, sweet water has come out of his freshwater well, he said. That changed this year.

"We first started noticing problems when the fracking sites went active," he said.

Hedtke's well, originally set to draw water from 300 feet, is 500 feet now and can't go any deeper. The water filter in his spring house fills with sand every few days, he said.

"I have to change these every Friday," he said of the paper filters lying on the packed dirt floor.

He no longer offers visitors a glass of ice water from the tap, he said, because it is too sandy and smells of sulfur. Now, he uses bottled water to wash the dishes and clean his clothes because the sand fouls the lines feeding his dishwasher and washing machine.

The county, a ranching community about 70 miles northeast of Corpus Christi, is a fracking hot spot inside the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas formation.

Two fracking sites are less than a half-mile west of Hedtke's front porch off Farm-to-Market Road 1144 near Farm-to-Market Road 99. Three others are located within sight of his favorite shade tree out back. Another is planned, he said, less than a quarter mile from his back door.

Water is in high demand throughout Karnes County, an area already ravaged by the state's worst drought in 50 years.

Twelve-inch, aboveground waterlines crisscross the county, pieced together in 20-foot sections. Signs advertise freshwater sources and well digging services needed to sustain the various fracking sites that, on average, require between 4 and 6 million gallons.

The Eagle Ford Shale formation is so dense that only a mixture of water, sand and a variety of chemicals applied at high pressure, can loosen the shale's grip long enough to free the trapped oil and gas.

Oil and gas producers have all the water they need, experts said, because the formation is located beneath several underground water resources, including the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer, one of nine major aquifers within Texas and one of largest on the continent.

The problem may come later, said Alyssa Burgin, director of the Texas Drought Project, a nonprofit drought education group.

During a recent tour of the Eagle Ford Shale play with a group of residents who live in the Barnett Shale play of northeast Texas, Burgin said residents of Laredo, Cuero and College Station voiced concern over the amount of water used.

"They're also concerned about the possibility of drilling within city limits and its effect on vulnerable populations," she said.

Burgin said that, during a meeting in Cuero, a resident showed up with a gallon of water, tainted orange and stinking of sulfur.

"He said it had come from his well," she said. She said that, although several at the meeting were suspicious of the fracking operations nearby, he was the only one to come to the meeting with any physical evidence.

HIGH DEMAND

It's called slick water.

The fluid pumped into a fracking well is a mixture of about 80 percent water, 15 percent sand and 5 percent chemicals and acids designed to fracture rock far below the Earth's surface.

When injected with sufficient pressure into a well, the mixture forces its way into the ground, dissolving and breaking up the oil and gas rich shale beneath many South Texas counties.

The success of the process has oil companies operating throughout the region, and the expansion has revived small rural towns..

By 2020, the shale could account for almost 70,000 jobs and $22 billion in overall revenues, about $1 billion of which will go to the state and a half billion of which will go to local governments, according to an industry-funded economic analysis conducted by the University of Texas at San Antonio Institute for Economic Development.

"A lot of the work is out in the western part of South Texas ... where there isn't a lot of surface water," said Richard Hay, assistant director of the Center for Water Supply Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "It's typical for most oil and gas operations to sink a water well to supply the fracking with water."

Hay said a single well requires up to 4 million gallons. Chesapeake Energy, a major player in the shale, estimates usage as high as 6 million gallons per well, enough to cover an 18-acre field in a foot of water.

Oil companies often sign agreements with landowners for access to the water underneath their land, Hay said.

Many of the ingredients in a fracking well are not fit for consumption. Sand is piled high at staging sites across South Texas, including Corpus Christi. Chemicals, some toxic are trucked to well sites. Water, however, is a resource shared by all, including cities providing drinking water for citizens and farmers growing livestock and crops.

Burgin said the concern today is with supplying future generations.

"Our aquifers — no question — are vast and deep," Burgin said. "But the population keeps increasing and in some areas may double in the next 50 years. There will be more need for water."

Texas' infrastructure must expand to accommodate a population that is expected to double from more than 25 million in 2010 to almost 50 million by 2060, according to the water development board's 2012 draft state water plan..

Industrial water use is projected to demand less than a million acre-feet of water per year by 2060, compared to 3 million acre-feet per year from municipal use and about 3.75 million acre-feet annually in agricultural use.

Whereas a city reclaims some water for reuse, water pumped into a fracking well is not usually recovered, Hay said.

"It's not like they inject it and suck it back out," he said. "Most of that water goes into the formation and pretty much stays there."

The water that does emerge from the well, he said, is unusable and disposed into injection wells — underground oil and gas zones hollowed out by prior drilling operations.

Sometimes the water is used expediently — to create additional pressure on the producing well — helping wring more oil and gas from the shale, he said.

Either way, the water is no longer fit for human consumption.

OTHER CONCERNS

In May, the head of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson told a Congressional committee that there is no proven case of water contamination related to fracking.

"There is evidence that it can certainly affect them ... I'm not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself affected water, although there are investigations ongoing," she said.

The agency in July announced plans to study five active and two prospective fracking sites in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, the Barnett Shale in Texas and the Raton Basin in Colorado.

The studies will focus on well water and surface water contamination, not aquifer contamination or water availability.

The Eagle Ford Shale is not included in the study, which set criteria based on population density, drinking water supply, past evidence of drinking water contamination and lack of data, according to a release from the agency.

The results are slated for a 2014 release.

Energy legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President George Bush in 2005 exempted any hydraulic fracturing well not using diesel fuel from regulation under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Hay said environmentalists' concern may be unfounded because fracking wells run far deeper than water wells. Fracking wells are usually below 5,000 feet while the deepest water wells are less than 1,000 feet deep, he said.

"It is highly unlikely that fracking sand makes its way from a deep well into a shallow aquifer," he said.

To address concerns, the Texas Railroad Commission formed the Eagle Ford Task Force, a group of 24 industry leaders, local and state officials, and environmentalists..

NOT WORTH A FIGHT

Texas has generous water laws protecting users who prove the water consumed is not being wasted, Hay said.

Hedtke's well may be drying up because he doesn't have enough pressure to pull the well water higher, he said. There may be too much demand on the aquifer around his well and the intense drought the state is experiencing could be a factor.

"Even if he could prove the draw down was due to the nearby fracking, Texas water right laws leave him little recourse," Hay said. "In Texas, the landowner has the right to capture water beneath his land for beneficial use, including fracking."

That means if a permitted well is installed next door, they can draw as much as they want.

"If it makes his well go dry, it's too bad for him," he said.

Rob and Beverly Sawyer live about a half mile away from Hedtke. They said their 240-foot water well is clean and plentiful.

Beverly Sawyer wonders sometimes if fracking will have an effect on the long-term water supply and said she would like to see more information made available on fracking water use.

The Legislature earlier this year passed a law to bolster transparency from oil and gas producers. It requires companies to list nonproprietary chemicals used in each well on forms available online. But it does not require companies to publish how much water is used.

"They are using so much water to drill the wells, I wonder sometimes if it'll combine with the drought and cause a problem down the line," Sawyer said.

Scott Davidson, a rancher and the Sawyers' neighbor, said the five water wells on his property, dug between 200 and 300 feet deep, have plenty of water.

"People are seriously mistaken if they think fracking is drying out our wells," he said.

Davidson said he has so much water he is siphoning it from his stock pond and selling it to a nearby drilling rig.

Hedtke, a retired Valero employee, considered fighting the oil and gas drillers about his situation. He even contacted the Evergreen Underground Water Conservation District in Pleasanton and complained.

"They came out and said there's not much they could do," Hedtke recalled.

District officials could not be reached for comment.

Ultimately, the economic boom the drilling provides outweighs his sandy water, he said.

"They're providing jobs and creating energy," he said. "I also don't want to cause trouble for my neighbors who may have wells coming in soon."

He said he often thinks of his wife's advice, imparted the night before she died in July.

"Allan," she told him, "when you know they're not going to do anything about it, why raise Cain?"

"I'm an old man and I'm not going to worry, I can't," he said later. "But, I do feel bad for the younger kids who'll have to put up with this mess."